CBS' decision to air ad shows double standard

You have to wonder what they think about at CBS.

During the Super Bowl today, they plan to air a commercial (at $2.65 million) promoting a missionary couple's decision to go to term with their child under extremely adverse conditions. The child would grow up to become Heisman Trophy winner and national champion team leader Tim Tebow.

I salute the family's courage. I'm dumbfounded by CBS' double standard-based reasoning, though.

In accepting this ad to be run during the year's traditionally most-watched telecast, the network is exercising an important right: to carry the paid message of an organization expressing its opinion on an issue. This issue, however, ignites at pyromania level and only goes up the emotional thermometer from there.

Already, and rightfully so, the National Organization for Women, Planned Parenthood and others are protesting through every vehicle at their disposal the 30-second Super Bowl spot. Planned Parenthood is running its own ad at plannedparenthood.com featuring a former pro football player and a former Olympic gold medalist both promoting women's rights not only to choose but also their emotional and intellectual preparedness in today's modern world to exercise that right.

The double standard comes into play in what CBS isn't promoting: its rejection of another polarizing ad. It's from Mancrunch.com and promotes, well, take a guess. The ad depicts two twentysomething rabid male football fans watching the Big Game, hooting and trash-talking each other . . . until their hands unintentionally meet at the snack bowl. It sparks a romantic comedy-like scenario in which they recognize their attraction to each other. After a brief gaze into each others' eyes, they pounce on each other with animal magnetism, a realization-of-love moment practically dripping of a script from an episode of "Friends."

The camera pulls back to a third man in the room, embarrassingly caught between watching them and the game. If it weren't such a sensitive topic, it would be as hysterical as a Jennifer Aniston romantic comedy. Quite frankly, it's as hysterical as the Tebow ad is conservative.

Yet, the former was rejected by CBS and the latter accepted. This from the network that brought you Janet Jackson's wardrobe malfunction during a previous Super Bowl halftime spectacle (the most Tivo'ed moment in the technology service's history) and received a record FCC fine for it, spread across its affiliates. And let's not forget the astute, ethical reporting of Dan Rather on "W" in the military that ultimately got him dismissed from the network and the esteemed "60 Minutes" backing down on its once-and-former whistle-blower story. Tiffany network? Yeah, right.

To be fair, I don't agree with the moral in the ad depicting the Tebow family's story, but I back their right to tell it. Free speech is a basic American right that we defend and promote around the world.

However, in rejecting the Mancrunch ad promoting gay relationships, CBS is showing the same narrow-mindedness that got it in trouble with Rather reporting on "W" and "60 Minutes" reporting on whistle-blowing insiders.

This isn't about pro-life, but it is about pro-choice. Pro-choice to speak freely, pro-choice to address issues freely and pro-choice to protect, defend and promote that right around the world, as we Americans do.

Until, close mindedly, we don't.

• Howard Schlossberg is an associate professor of journalism at Columbia College Chicago and a freelance sports writer.